CHAPTER IV
WHAT BEAUTY CONCEALED
Emmeline, seated on the coral rock, had almost forgotten Dick for amoment. The sun was setting, and the warm amber light of the sunsetshone on reef and rock-pool. Just at sunset and low tide the reef had apeculiar fascination for her. It had the low-tide smell of sea-weedexposed to the air, and the torment and trouble of the breakers seemedeased. Before her, and on either side, the foam-dashed coral glowed inamber and gold, and the great Pacific came glassing and glittering in,voiceless and peaceful, till it reached the strand and burst into songand spray.
Here, just as on the hill-top at the other side of the island, youcould mark the rhythm of the rollers. “Forever, and forever—forever,and forever,” they seemed to say.
The cry of the gulls came mixed with the spray on the breeze. Theyhaunted the reef like uneasy spirits, always complaining, never atrest; but at sunset their cry seemed farther away and less melancholy,perhaps because just then the whole island world seemed bathed in thespirit of peace.
She turned from the sea prospect and looked backwards over the lagoonto the island. She could make out the broad green glade beside whichtheir little house lay, and a spot of yellow, which was the thatch ofthe house, just by the artu tree, and nearly hidden by the shadow ofthe breadfruit. Over woods the fronds of the great cocoa-nut palmsshowed above every other tree silhouetted against the dim, dark blue ofthe eastern sky.
Seen by the enchanted light of sunset, the whole picture had an unreallook, more lovely than a dream. At dawn—and Dick would often start forthe reef before dawn, if the tide served—the picture was as beautiful;more so, perhaps, for over the island, all in shadow, and against thestars, you would see the palm-tops catching fire, and then the light ofday coming through the green trees and blue sky, like a spirit, acrossthe blue lagoon, widening and strengthening as it widened, across thewhite foam, out over the sea, spreading like a fan, till, all at once,night was day, and the gulls were crying and the breakers flashing, thedawn wind blowing, and the palm trees bending, as palm trees only knowhow. Emmeline always imagined herself alone on the island with Dick,but beauty was there, too, and beauty is a great companion.
The girl was contemplating the scene before her. Nature in herfriendliest mood seemed to say, “Behold me! Men call me cruel; men havecalled me deceitful, even treacherous. _I_—ah well! my answer is,‘Behold me!’”
The girl was contemplating the specious beauty of it all, when on thebreeze from seaward came a shout. She turned quickly. There was Dick upto his knees in a rock-pool a hundred yards or so away, motionless, hisarms upraised, and crying out for help. She sprang to her feet.
There had once been an islet on this part of the reef, a tiny thing,consisting of a few palms and a handful of vegetation, and destroyed,perhaps, in some great storm. I mention this because the existence ofthis islet once upon a time was the means, indirectly, of saving Dick’slife; for where these islets have been or are, “flats” occur on thereef formed of coral conglomerate.
Emmeline in her bare feet could never have reached him in time overrough coral, but, fortunately, this flat and comparatively smoothsurface lay between them.
“My spear!” shouted Dick, as she approached.
He seemed at first tangled in brambles; then she thought ropes weretangling round him and tying him to something in the water—whatever itwas, it was most awful, and hideous, and like a nightmare. She ran withthe speed of Atalanta to the rock where the spear was resting, all redwith the blood of new-slain fish, a foot from the point.
As she approached Dick, spear in hand, she saw, gasping with terror,that the ropes were alive, and that they were flickering and ripplingover his back. One of them bound his left arm to his side, but hisright arm was free.
“Quick!” he shouted.
In a second the spear was in his free hand, and Emmeline had castherself down on her knees, and was staring with terrified eyes into thewater of the pool from whence the ropes issued. She was, despite herterror, quite prepared to fling herself in and do battle with thething, whatever it might be.
What she saw was only for a second. In the deep water of the pool,gazing up and forward and straight at Dick, she saw a face, lugubriousand awful. The eyes were wide as saucers, stony and steadfast; a large,heavy, parrot-like beak hung before the eyes, and worked and wobbled,and seemed to beckon. But what froze one’s heart was the expression ofthe eyes, so stony and lugubrious, so passionless, so devoid ofspeculation, yet so fixed of purpose and full of fate.
From away far down he had risen with the rising tide. He had beenfeeding on crabs, when the tide, betraying him, had gone out, leavinghim trapped in the rock-pool. He had slept, perhaps, and awakened tofind a being, naked and defenceless, invading his pool. He was quitesmall, as octopods go, and young, yet he was large and powerful enoughto have drowned an ox.
The octopod has only been described once, in stone, by a Japaneseartist. The statue is still extant, and it is the most terriblemasterpiece of sculpture ever executed by human hands. It represents aman who has been bathing on a low-tide beach, and has been caught. Theman is shouting in a delirium of terror, and threatening with his freearm the spectre that has him in its grip. The eyes of the octopod arefixed upon the man—passionless and lugubrious eyes, but steadfast andfixed.
Another whip-lash shot out of the water in a shower of spray, andseized Dick by the left thigh. At the same instant he drove the pointof the spear through the right eye of the monster, deep down througheye and soft gelatinous carcass till the spear-point dirled andsplintered against the rock. At the same moment the water of the poolbecame black as ink, the bands around him relaxed, and he was free.
Emmeline rose up and seized him, sobbing and clinging to him, andkissing him. He clasped her with his left arm round her body, as if toprotect her, but it was a mechanical action. He was not thinking ofher. Wild with rage, and uttering hoarse cries, he plunged the brokenspear again and again into the depths of the pool, seeking utterly todestroy the enemy that had so lately had him in its grip. Then slowlyhe came to himself, and wiped his forehead, and looked at the brokenspear in his hand.
“Beast!” he said. “Did you see its eyes? Did you see its eyes? I wishit had a hundred eyes, and I had a hundred spears to drive into them!”
She was clinging to him, and sobbing and laughing hysterically, andpraising him. One might have thought that he had rescued her fromdeath, not she him.
The sun had nearly vanished, and he led her back to where the dinghywas moored recapturing and putting on his trousers on the road. Hepicked up the dead fish he had speared; and as he rowed her back acrossthe lagoon, he talked and laughed, recounting the incidents of thefight, taking all the glory of the thing to himself, and seeming quiteto ignore the important part she had played in it.
This was not from any callousness or want of gratitude, but simply fromthe fact that for the last five years he had been the be-all andend-all of their tiny community—the Imperial master. And he wouldjust as soon have thought of thanking her for handing him the spear asof thanking his right hand for driving it home. She was quite content,seeking neither thanks nor praise. Everything she had came from him:she was his shadow and his slave. He was her sun.
He went over the fight again and again before they lay down to rest,telling her he had done this and that, and what he would do to the nextbeast of the sort. The reiteration was tiresome enough, or would havebeen to an outside listener, but to Emmeline it was better than Homer.People’s minds do not improve in an intellectual sense when they areisolated from the world, even though they are living the wild and happylives of savages.
Then Dick lay down in the dried ferns and covered himself with a pieceof the striped flannel which they used for blanketing, and he snored,and chattered in his sleep like a dog hunting imaginary game, andEmmeline lay beside him wakeful and thinking. A new terror had comeinto her life. She had seen death for the second time, but this timeactive and in being.